Games utilizingplaying cards are popular throughout the world. Many people get hours of enjoyment and relaxation from playing cards. In certain parts of the world, wagering adds an additional dimension of excitement to the game. Whether in "card room" games where one of the players who is not associated with the owner of the establishment acts as a banker or in a traditional "casino" game environment where an employee of the house acts as a banker, wagering adds excitement to many forms of card games.
Players involved in card games with wagering often enjoy new games with relatively simple rules that can readily be learned by a beginner or casual player. Players and casinos also enjoy games that can be played quickly.
Typical card games involve a dealer providing a plurality of cards to each player. Each player then gathers the cards and tries to form the best possible hand according to some pre-determined hierarchy of hand values. For example, a standard poker hierarchy is, in descending order, Royal Flush, Straight Flush, Four of a Kind, Full House, Flush, Three of a Kind, Two Pair, One Pair, and High Card. In some games, players are permitted to discard certain cards and receive new cards in an effort to form a better hand.
It is also common to designate one or more cards as "wild" cards which can have any one of a predetermined number of values at the option of the player(s) receiving such wild cards. In this manner, the designation of wild cards within a deck can significantly increase the chances of a player attaining a successful hand. In known games which utilize wild cards, players must use the wild card in the hand in which the wild card is received. Therefore, is a player has a card hand of low or no value, the wild card may not be sufficient to allow that player to form a winning hand. For example, if the payout schedule for a given game starts at a pair of jacks, and the player has the following hand: 2, 4, 5, 10 of different suits and a wild card, the best poker hand that the player could form would be a pair of 10's. This hand would not qualify for a winning payout.
It is therefore desirable to provide a card game which increases the players' excitement and enjoyment, as well as the level of player participation by providing a player with an opportunity to maximize the impact of receiving a wild card.
It would also be desirable to provide a novel card game readily adaptable to wagering which is relatively simple to learn for a new player and which can be played quickly.
It would also be desirable to provide a game which provides a player with opportunities to increase his winning payout by using a wild card, received during the play of one hand, with a subsequent hand when a newly formed hand will provide a particularly high winning payout.